


The Bars Between Trust

by AmateurScribes



Series: Whumptober 2019 [3]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Delirium, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hyperactive Delirium, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Prompt Fic, Whumptober 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 04:58:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20886497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmateurScribes/pseuds/AmateurScribes
Summary: Years of friendship can give people an unbreakable bond of trust.Simmons has this with Grif, even after reuniting with him after the latter quit.





	The Bars Between Trust

**Author's Note:**

> I was planning on having this done by morning, but my entire commute got screwed over yesterday, which is why I'm posting this kinda late, whoops! But I did prove myself right in trying to get ahead of the curve by writing the prompts the day prior- otherwise I would have missed yesterdays completely!
> 
> For the duration of this event, all mistakes are my own.

Simmons trust Grif more than he's ever trusted anyone else.

And this means that while he's not confident of the validity of Locus coming to get them, like Grif said would happen, he's inclined to trust the other man.

"I was the distraction," Grif explained. "Locus went off to find Carolina and Wash, and then he'll come get us."

Tucker didn't seem to believe Grif, refuting this statement by saying, "What reason do we have to believe anything that you're saying? How do we know that he isn't just tricking you so that he could get a chance to take out Wash once and for all."

Shaking his head, Grif scoffs at the idea, "Trust me, he's turned over a new leaf."

Simmons does. He trusts Grif through and through. Doubts him, sure, thinks that maybe he got duped, but trusts that what he's saying, at least to  _ him, _ is true.

It seems like he's the only one.

"And we should trust you because?" Tucker asked, anger seeping into his tone. "You just betrayed us like that," he snapped his fingers, "and if you've learned about me over the years, it's that I don't forgive and forget, bitch."

"I know, and I realize now that I was wrong," Grif says with sincerity. "I'll gain your trust back, and the first step towards that will be when Locus walks through those doors to save us."

"And when he doesn't come, that'll just be another reason to not trust you," Tucker concluded, turning away from to focus on Caboose, whispering in hushed tones about things that Simmons didn't want to eavesdrop on. But he has an idea of what it's about.

So he trusts Grif and figures that more impossible things have happened before.

But Locus doesn't come. At least, he hasn't freed them by the time a random no-name SIM brings them their meager dinners.

Grif isn't happy about that, he doesn't even glance at the food as he scowls towards the doors.

The others are getting ready to turn in when Grif repeats, "He's going to come."

"I swear he's going to come," is how he greets them when they all wake up in the morning, no rescue having woken them up in the middle of the night.

Locus doesn't come that day either.

Simmons watches helplessly as Grif starts to slowly pace the edges of the cell that he's in, occasionally pausing and looking towards the block's entrance as if Locus would just magically appear. 

When he doesn't see anything he continues to pace.

And Simmons has to convince him to sit down and eat when they're brought breakfast and lunch and eventually dinner.

He's getting worried. But he still trusts Grif, knowing that even if Locus was still in the base, he had probably rescued only Carolina and Wash- the more important soldiers, the non _ -SIM _ soldiers.

Tucker had punched the wall in a fit of anger, declaring that by this point Temple had probably already won- had probably already destroyed the UNSC and was on his way back to mock them for failing at saving the day.

And while Tucker yells and shouts and kicks and punches the wall, Grif's pacing starts to get a bit more frantic and hurried. 

He's stopped saying that Locus was coming to get them at least.

Simmons doesn't know what to say in reassurance, he's never really been good at that,  _ none _ of them were, so he just watches in silence.

It's during the next day that Tucker collapses against the wall of his cell and buries his face into his bleeding and bruised hands.

And even though he mutters it, they all manage to hear clear as a bell,  _ "Carolina and Wash are as good as dead now." _

They're all silent for the rest of the day, no one wants to break the silence, no one want's to be  _ that _ guy.

So somehow they all end up in mourning and they all join Grif in having no appetite when dinner is brought to them.

And he doesn't know what compels him to wake up in the middle of the night, but he's glad he does so because then he finally realized that compared to the rest of them, Grif was still up.

"Grif," he hissed softly. "What are you still doing up?"

The orange soldier didn't respond to him, continuing to stand straight against the wall, finger's gripping tightly against his biceps. 

"Grif?" he tried again.

"I don't want to deal with you right now," Grif tells him plainly, voice lacking emotion. "Or any of the others."

"Oh," and his heart twinges with hurt. He just wants to curl back up into a ball and shrivel away. "Ok."

Maybe Grif had just been pulling an act, putting up the repentant disposition to earn their forgiveness back, but deep down he still hated all of them. Hated Simmons.

"I said,  _ shut up," _ Grif snaps, leaning off of the wall and clenching his fists at his side as he stared off at nothing. He didn't even look at Simmons, and that's probably what hurt most of all.

So Simmons did. He left the other man alone and went back to sleep. Even though he really didn't want to.

The next morning, he doesn't plan to confront Grif about what had happened in the middle of the night. But then something changes from the routine that they had set up of stewing in their misery.

As Grif paces around his cell, he runs his hand against the bars and the wall continuously. It only made a soft clinking sound as he did so, and Simmons couldn't for the life of him figure out why he was doing it.

Boredom maybe?

Well, whatever it was that caused it, the change wasn't very welcomed.

"Can you fucking  _ stop that?!" _ Tucker barked, glaring at Grif from where he sat hunched over in the cell. He had abandoned his helmet not too long ago, showing off his worn out and tired and very much  _ angry _ face to all of them.

Grif doesn't answer him, doesn't even look in his direction, he just keeps doing it.

"Seriously, if you don't stop I'm going to come over there and  _ make you _ stop," Tucker threatened, getting up from his crouch. He went close to the bars, wrapping his hands tightly around them.

At that, Grif  _ does _ pause, staring at him for a moment before continuing again.

"Hey, asshole!" Tucker shouted. "Respond to me when I'm fucking speaking to you!"

"No," Grif says, directly responding to him for the first time since Tucker got riled up.

"No?" Tucker repeated. "What the hell do you mean by no? I have every right to tell you to quit that shit- it's because of your fuck up that we're stuck here."

"You're not stuck  _ anywhere," _ Grif stated nonchalantly. "You're not even real, if you're annoyed by it then just fucking  _ leave." _

What?

Tucker seems to reflect his confusion as well because he stares baffled at the orange armored soldier and asks, "What the fuck is that shit? Not real? If I'm not real then what the fuck am I then?"

"I told you to leave me alone last night," Grif stops pacing and drops his hand from where it had paused on one of the bars. "I told all of you that, so why are you still here?"

"You didn't say anything last night so I can bull," Tucker crosses his arms as Simmons stills. He really should speak up now, confirm that Grif was technically telling the truth in a way, but that it had happened to  _ Simmons _ and not Tucker.

"Yes I  _ did," _ Grif growled. "I told you and Simmons and Sarge and even fucking Donut-"

"Where is Donut?" Caboose whispered, glancing around the jail cell.

Simmons noticed too, but when he was going to comment on it, Tucker steamrolled him with his, "Sarge!? That traitor was here last night?!"

He couldn't take it anymore, Simmons had to speak up because something was obviously wrong.

"No, he wasn't," Simmons said, not faltering when Tucker turned his gaze to him. "Grif- he did tell me to shut up last night, but- it was only all of us in the cell, no one else."

"So he's just a liar," Tucker settled on. "Lying to us about Locus coming to save us and now he's lying to get us all angry. Good one, really had me going there for a second. And here I thought you were making an effort to win my  _ trust." _

And that seemed to be the wrong thing to say, because where Grif had been calm if not angry, now he exploded in a fit of agitation.

"Oh, oh, of course! It's always  _ my _ fault isn't it?" Grif stepped far away from the bars of the cell and moved towards the center of it. Then his voice changed into a mimic of Sarge's as he said,  _ "What am I always telling you, you no good nothing dirtbag! You're useless, no exceptions!" _

Whirling around and facing nobody he yelled, "Fuck you, Sarge!"

Simmons gets a lump in his throat as he hears that, and he doesn't want to believe that the words were true but, "Sarge... Sarge hasn't said that to you recently, has he?"

It seemed as though Sarge and Grif's relationship had mellowed out with the years, the threats their commanding officer gave no longer sounding serious, and rather becoming just one part of their dynamic. That one moment on Chorus when they had all finally reunited, Simmons could tell that it was the clearest sign of how their relationship had grown. But the way that Grif had spouted the vitriol hadn't seemed like joking, but rather frustrated and hurt.

"Recently?" Grif's voice got higher the more worked up he got. "He just did it right now!"

Warning sirens went off in Simmons' head.

"Grif, are you alright?" he asks tentatively.

"Alright?  _ Alright?" _ Grif yanks off his helmet and throws it against the bars of the cage. "Of course, why wouldn't I be! I really fooled myself this time, didn't I?"

He collapses onto his knees and his hands snake up to curl tightly into his hair as his lip wobbles and his eyes begin to dampen.

"None of this is real, and I really thought it was this time too," he presses his head against the floor of the cell, his voice dropping into a whisper. "I'm still stuck on Iris and you guys aren't even really  _ here _ even if you aren't saying anything mean to me."

The sounds of fingers running across bars echoes and pounds in Simmons' mind, and he gets slapped in the face with hindsight, realizing that he had been  _ grounding _ himself. And then his stomach churns when he realizes that Grif  _ needed _ to ground himself, that the feeling of bars against his hand proved that he was somewhere else and that when Tucker told him to stop and he did and he was no longer feeling anything he-

"He's fucking delirious," Tucker announces, distressed and concerned.

Grif's mumbling under his breath know, not picking his head up from off of the floor, and they didn't even consider the consequences of isolation did they. How could they, how were they supposed to predict this, how-

How was Simmons supposed to trust Grif when he couldn't even trust what was happening around him?

By being loyal, this wouldn't change anything- wouldn't change his trust in the man.

"Grif," he kneels down and gets close to his side of the bars. Grif ignores him so he says more firmly,  _ "Grif." _

This gets Grif to look up, but considering the suspicious look on his face, he must've been expecting something mean to come out of his mouth. He's not sorry to disappoint him when he says, "Take my hand."

His face scrunched up in confusion, and he asks, "What?"

"Take my hand," Simmons repeated, slipping his arm between the bars, palm facing upward as he offered his hand. "I'm here and I'm real, and I can prove it by taking your hand."

Grif sits up straighter and looks at the offered hand. A serious of emotions flash across his face before he settles on consideration. Then, he slowly lifts up his hand and goes to reach out to Simmons, and their fingers are almost touching when-

The door to the cell opens and Grif snatches his hand back, leaping to his feet, apprehensive of who was going to come.

It's Temple, he's finally back, and at the sight of the cobalt colored soldier Tucker immediately scowls and shakes with fury.

"You know, I was worried for a while," Temple starts, voice smug as all hell. "I really thought he would give Carolina a run for her money, you all know how competitive she can be."

Simmons has no idea what he's getting at and thinks that maybe he's come to confirm that Carolina and Wash are dead, but then the villain continues.

"But even with a head start, Carolina maintains her position at the top of the leader board, and  _ I," _ there's a hum as he activates an energy sword, holding it out proudly in front of himself.

Simmons' eyes dart to Tucker, but he's still alive and a few seconds away from throttling someone, so if that's not his sword than who-

Grif figures it out first and collapses right back to the floor, a devastated look on his face, drained and unable to support himself.

_ Locus. _

Simmons should have trusted Grif to tell the truth.

"I've won," Temple says with satisfaction. "And to the victor goes the spoils."

He walked further into the room.

Simmons' cell was the closest to the hand that held the energy sword, and he unconsciously took a step back in fear.

Temple noticed, and walked closer to him until the bars prevented him from going out any further, speaking out to the stifled and hopeless room, "Now, I need to figure out what to do with all of you."

**Author's Note:**

> So while looking up the signs and symptoms of delirium I was surprised to see that a lot of it sorta fits with what Grif experienced during his time in isolation on Iris so I was like, 'fuck yeah that's convienent' and this may be my billionth time writing for season 15, but by now I'd consider myself an expert, haha.
> 
> If you have need to contact me, or just wanna chat and share some idea's or whatever, you can find me at my Tumblr's: @agent-murica (main) and @amateurscribes (writing).


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